10 Milestones Parents Hit In the Post-Toddler Years

We spend so much time tracking our children’s
milestones that we rarely step back to think about the milestones we reach
as parents. Some of my personal favorite parenting milestones have occurred in
the transition from the toddler years to the preschool years:

1. You
stop fishing boogers out of your kid’s nose

I can’t be the only person who’s taken their pinky
fingernail and snagged a booger out of a baby’s nose, right? For some reason, the
goop that drips and congeals in a baby’s nose doesn’t seem all that revolting.
But somewhere around age 3, boogers become, well, exactly as disgusting as they
always have been. They seem more disgusting in a big kid’s nose. So pass
the tissues, please.

2. You
no longer feel like you want to die each time you try and squeeze your child’s
fingers into a glove

I have no idea why anyone makes gloves for toddlers.
Trying to shove 10 tiny fingers into 10 tiny holes is enough to make me want
to risk my child’s fingers to frostbite. (No, not really. I just buy mittens.)

Anyway, somewhere around the preschool years, kids learn
how to fit their own fingers into a glove. And that day is glorious.

3. No
more poop finger

Nearly every parent has experienced the dreaded poop
finger. You pull back your child’s diaper to check on its contents, and you end
up with a finger dredged in crap. But this mostly stops during the preschool
years. You know why?

Because many preschoolers don’t wear diapers anymore,
that’s why.

4. You
have help with some chores

Let’s be honest: preschoolers aren’t all that adept at
making their beds, and it’s dangerous for them to use most household cleaning
products. But they can take their dirty clothes to the hamper. And pick up
their toys. And scrub the floor and baseboards with a wet wipe. (Try it! They’re
perfect for the job.) Better yet, kids this age often love to help with the
cleaning—it makes them feel grown up and important. Enjoy that sense of
helpfulness while it lasts.

No offense to toddlers, but they’re basically
super-adorable blobs of stupid who seem hell-bent on touching, swallowing,
pulling, opening and yanking everything that can kill them.

5. Please
welcome the Age of Reason

A toddler might cry until they almost puke just
because the grass is green. Or because their jacket has pockets. Or because they
can’t eat cat food for lunch. (All things my toddlers have lost their minds over
in years past.)

Toddlers are learning to string complex sentences
together. But preschoolers learn how to string complex ideas together. The result
can be pretty magical.

7. You
kind of sleep through the night

Only the very lucky parents of preschoolers get a full night’s sleep on the
regular. But preschooler-sleep is generally more consistent than baby and toddler
sleep—enough so that you might finally start to feel like a fully functioning human being again.

8. You
can finally think complete thoughts again

Remember those? Thanks to preschoolers’ ability to
entertain themselves for longer periods of time, they derail your train of
thought far less frequently than they did when they were toddlers.

9. And
you can focus your attention on something other than your child for longer than
five seconds

No offense to toddlers, but they’re basically
super-adorable blobs of stupid who seem hell-bent on touching, swallowing,
pulling, opening and yanking everything that can kill them. They need
near-constant supervision. Preschoolers? Not as much. You still need to watch
them, but not with such all-encompassing focus.

10. And
finally, if you don’t already have another baby, you start to forget how hard
the newborn and baby stages were